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Originally posted in response to the burn-out as a result of the pandemics of 2020, this post is as relevant as ever. Juggling ever changing contexts and considerations at work, while setting boundaries to keep ourselves healthy can really wear a person down. And that's not even considering additional responsibilites in caregiving, at home and in our communitites. Needless to say as we approach the end of the calendar year, and with it a short break, here is some advice from MSU's Well-being at Work Guide: Taking time away from work, in the forms of breaks, vacation time, or strengthening boundaries around employees’ workdays, is important. Breaks throughout employees’ days have many benefits. Employees should also remember to take a break for lunch. There are additional resources that walk employees through how to maximize lunch breaks, as well as the benefits from doing so. Taking vacation time, whether vacationing away or staying at home, helps employees increase their productivity and improve their health. This information is important for both supervisors and employees in order to work toward supporting employees and creating a healthier workplace. Vacation TimeGoing on a vacation or taking time away from work improves employees’ productivity, as well as their energy and focus within the workplace. Employees then can come back to the office refreshed and excited to get back to work, which translates into better productivity, higher quality work, and more energy in their workplace. Organizations and supervisors supporting employees taking vacation time increases the retention of employees and their loyalty to the organization, as well as increasing their job satisfaction (Vinocur, n.d.; Mohn, 2014). Almost 70% of employees feel more satisfied with their jobs if they take regular vacations, and more satisfied employees will stay at their jobs longer, reducing high turnover and costs associated with hiring (Vinocur, n.d.). Taking vacation time also strengthens employee relationships with their families and those they care about outside of work (Hutchison, n.d.c; Kasser & Sheldon, 2009). Taking vacation time also improves employees’ health, preventing heart disease and other illnesses, helping manage anxiety and depression, and improving their sleep by almost 20%. This can result in lower healthcare costs for employers and reduced stress for employees (Vinocur, n.d.). Taking vacation time should be encouraged, as it leads to a happier heather work climate. For employees to get the most out of their vacation time, they should prepare their workspace for their absence. Taking care of any final emails, setting up their “out of office” email, and organizing their work area allows employees to step away from their work for their vacation and come back to as little catch-up work as possible. If an employee must work during their vacation, they should set up certain time periods to work, then not work outside of that time, including checking their email (Hutchison, n.d.c). Taking these steps helps employees focus as much of their time as possible on their vacation, to step away from work and de-stress, and be excited to jump back into work upon their return. For more information on MSU’s vacation policies, visit MSU’s Human Resources Solution Center for walk-in services in Suite 110 of Nisbet Building or email them at SolutionsCenter@hr.msu.edu.
Benefits of taking vacation time:

Improves productivity 
Improves employees’ focus and energy in the workplace  
Increases retention of employees and employees’ loyalty to the organization 
Increases job satisfaction 

Almost 70% of employees feel more satisfied with their jobs if they take regular vacations 


Strengthens relationships with those outside of work 
Improves sleep by almost 20% 
Helps manage anxiety and depression 
Helps prevent heart disease and other illnesses 
Gives the body a break from constant stress 
Lowers healthcare costs 

How to set yourself up to get the most out of your vacation time:

Take care of any final emails 
Set up your “out of office” email 
Organize your work area so you come back to a clean space 
If you have to work during your vacation, try to set a certain time period that you work, and do not work outside of that time period, including checking your email

For more information on MSU’s vacation policies, the HR Solution Center offers walk-in services in Suite 110 of Nisbet Building and answers questions via email at SolutionsCenter@hr.msu.edu Additionally, in Focus on Can and Serve, educator Erica Venton shares her own tips for being present this time of year, even if it brings difficulties, stress, or sadness. She includes being giving the gift of kindness and reflecting on what you have control over in her recommendations. Read the full article here.
Resources Supporting Wellness on Campus

Health4U  

Rest with Music classes 
Emotional wellbeing classes and one on one coaching 
Walking paths across campus can be useful for employees to practice grounding strategies throughout the workday. See Health4U’s maps to chart walks, runs, or bike paths: https://health4u.msu.edu/resources/msu-campus-walking-tour
See https://health4u.msu.edu/wellness for more information


Employee Assistance Program 

Free, confidential, up to six sessions of counseling, per issue

For MSU employees (faculty and staff), their spouses or partners, and their children (insurance eligible)


Counseling on work and employment situations 
Stress reduction classes 
Emotional wellness classes 
See https://eap.msu.edu/ for more information


WorkLife Office 

Professional staff offer one-on-one consultations to help employees deal with many issues, including stressors at work and at home

See the introduction page of this guide for information on how to request a consultation


The office also offers many presentations and trainings on a variety of topics, including stress and grounding strategies

See the introduction page of this guide for information on how to request a presentation





Sources
Hutchison, J. (n.d.c). Why vacations matter. Michigan State University WorkLife Office. https://worklife.msu.edu/news/why-vacations-matter
Kasser, T., & Sheldon, K. M. (2009). Time affluence as a path toward personal happiness and ethical business practice: Empirical evidence from four studies. Journal of Business Ethics, 84, 243–255. http://dx.doi.org.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/10.1007/s10551-008-9696-1
Vinocur, L. (n.d.). 10 reasons why vacations matter. Take Back Your Time. https://www.takebackyourtime.org/why-vacations-matter/10-reasons-to-vacation/
Mohn, T. (2014, February 28). Take a vacation: It’s good for productivity and the economy, according to a new study. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tanyamohn/2014/02/28/take-a-vacation-its-good-for-productivity-and-the-economy-according-to-a-new-study/#7652f6a85a33
Photo by Kira auf der Heide on Unsplash

The Community of Inquiry framework proposed by Garrison, Anderson, and Archern (2000) identifies three dimensions to support a social constructivist model of learning. Research suggests that building these three dimensions into your course will help to support the learning experience for your students. 
 
Cognitive Presence
Cognitive presence refers to the way your students might construct meaning in your course. This happens when they have the chance to be curious, explore, and have an "ah-ha" moment. You'll see this when they're able to connect and apply new ideas from the course. The important steps you'll need to take to support cognitive presence are to carefully select content for your course and support discourse. You can help to build this into your course by providing multiple opportunities for students to explore and engage with material that will help them to understand the big ideas. You can accomplish this in your course by providing different options for engaging with the content, such as reading texts, watching videos, and completing learning activities and various assessments. 
 
Social Presence
Social presence refers to the way your students might present themselves to the class. This happens when students have opportunities to openly communicate in class, and are free to express emotions in a risk-free environment. To encourage this, you should support the discourse and set the climate for discussion. You can support this by providing opportunities for interaction and collaboration amongst students and by modeling the kinds of behaviors they should follow. You can accomplish this by asking students to introduce themselves, either in a live zoom meeting or on the course discussion board. Set parameters for students to engage in discussion in both the asynchronous and synchronous environments. For example, in a synchronous zoom meeting you might direct students to post in the chat to answer a question and set breakout rooms for students to engage with their peers. Or, you might direct students to complete an assignment in a small group, and direct them to use an asynchronous discussion board to chat and plan their assignment. 
 
Teaching Presence 
Teaching presence refers to your structure and process, including how you will provide direct instruction to your students and build understanding. This means selecting the content, identifying the topics for discussion, and keeping the discussion focused on those topics. It will also help if you set the social climate and provide clear instructions for how students should engage with and respond to these discussions. You can easily accomplish this with discussion forums related to course topics, with targeted discussion questions in your online course. What are some other ways you might accomplish this?
 
 


Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T, & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2, 87–105

 

"Community of Inquiry Model" by jrhode is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The following MSU-specifics should be used to inform your decisions...
Overall guidance: We collectively share the responsibility to uphold intellectual honesty and scholarly integrity. These are core principles that may be compromised by the misuse of GenAI tools, particularly when GenAI-generated content is presented as original, human-created work.  
Permitted uses in Teaching & Learning: Instructors are expected to establish a course-specific guidance that defines the appropriate and inappropriate use of GenAI tools.

Students may only use GenAI tools to support their coursework in ways explicitly permitted by the instructor.  

Non-permissible uses: 

Do not Use GenAI to deliberately fabricate, falsify, impersonate, or mislead, unless explicitly approved for instruction or research in a controlled environment.
Do not Record or process sensitive, confidential, or regulated information withnon-MSU GenAI tools.
Do not Enter FERPA-protected student records, PII, PHI, financial, or HR data into unapproved tools; comply with MSU’s data policy and all regulations.
Do not Use export-controlled data or CUI with GenAI tools unless approved for MSU’s Regulated Research Enclave (RRE).

A well-prepared course should be designed for ("restrict", "permit" or "require") or designed around generative AI. Courses designed for ("ban") AI should detail the ways and degrees to which generative AI use will be incorporated into activities and assessments. Courses designed for AI may incorporate AI for some activities and not others and depending on course AI may be explicitly excluded or included at different stages. Courses designed around AI may discuss impacts of generative AI as a topic but expectations are that students will not use these types of tools, and the course should be intentionally designed such that the use of generative AI would either not be conducive to the completion of assessments and activities, or such that the attempt to do so would prove overly cumbersome. Regardless of your approach, communicating your expectations and rationale to learners is imperative.
Set clear expectations. Be clear in your syllabus about your policies for when, where, and how students should be using generative AI tools, and how to appropriately acknowledge (e.g., cite, reference) when they do use generative AI tools. If you are requiring students to use generative AI tools, these expectations should also be communicated in the syllabus and if students are incurring costs, these should be detailed in the course description on the Registrar’s website. 
Regardless of your approach, you might include time for ethics discussions. Add time into your course to discuss the ethical implications of chatGPT and forthcoming AI systems. Talk with students about the ethics of using generative AI tools in your course, at your university, and within your discipline or profession. Don’t be afraid to discuss the gray areas where we do not yet have clear guidance or answers; gray areas are often the places where learning becomes most engaging.Photo by Shahadat Rahman on Unsplash

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash
 
What Do I Mean By “Inclusive”?
 
Before I start discussing how your content and curriculum design choices can be more inclusive, let’s start with a working definition for an inclusive classroom. According to the Association of American Colleges & Universities, inclusive classrooms are learning spaces where “active, intentional, and ongoing engagement with diversity” occurs “in ways that increase awareness, content knowledge, cognitive sophistication, and empathetic understanding of the complex individuals interact within systems and institutions.”  So, as an instructor concerned about inclusive teaching, I encourage you do consider how your course content and assignments both represent a diverse (for example, gender, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, nationality, epistemological perspectives) set of scholarly voices and how you can hold yourself – and your students—to more inclusive standards of behavior and discourse in the classroom.
 
Inclusive Classrooms Require Intentional Thought and Not “Extra Work”
 
Creating an inclusive environment in your classroom does not require “extra work” – what it requires is “intentional thought” in how you plan and implement your classes. This involves a deliberate awareness of the decisions you’re making and the impact they have on how you represent your discipline and the multiple voices connected to it. I’d argue that this level of intentionality is a key hallmark of curriculum design across disciplines.
 
Four Tips Toward Inclusive Curriculum Design
 
(1) Select the work of scholars from different cultural or paradigmatic backgrounds: Make sure you are presenting a variety of voices and perspectives across the course readings, videos and material you select.  Additionally important is presenting a full spectrum of disciplinary paradigms in the field so that students have a full picture of disciplinary conversation(s).
 
(2) Acknowledge the limitations of course material with regards to demographic representation: Frame what you are providing and point out the potential limitations of your materials. This can help students see how and why you have made the decisions you did. This can also help students to get a better window into your teaching decisions and engage alongside you critically.
 
(3) Pay attention to WHO and HOW you represent in your presentation slides, case studies, videos, and guest panels: As with our tips above, it’s important that the slides, case studies, and videos you use reflect multiple voices and backgrounds. Additionally, it’s important to pay attention to how various individuals and groups are portrayed in these materials. In their portrayals, are you sending the messages you want sent to a diverse group of students?
 
(4) Maximize the inclusion of all student voices in instructional activities: Make sure you provide multiple opportunities and safe spaces in your classroom for all student voices. Not all students will immediately respond to one way of engaging in the classroom, so make sure your approaches vary and respond to what you have come to know about the different students in class. We will share more specific tips about instructional activities in later posts.

Developing your Scholarly and Ethical Approaches to Generative AI 
Taken, with slight modification, from “Update Your Course Syllabus for chatGPT” by Ryan Watkins, Professor of Educational Technology Leadership, and Human-Technology Collaboration at George Washington University in Washington DC (2022), via Medium. 
Beyond Syllabi Language
Additional considerations to help you develop your generative AI philosophy
Expand your options. Consider your repertoire of instructional strategies. Atsusi Hirumi offers a guide to research-grounded strategies for any classroom. These are not, however, “a la carte” menus; you must use all of the steps of any strategy to gain the evidence-based benefits.
Reflect on your values. As Tyler Cowen pointed out, there will be those who gain and those that lose with the emergence of chatGPT and other generative AI tools. This is as true for students as it is for faculty and instructors. Be ready to openly discuss the ethical implications of generative AI tools with your students, along with the value of what you are teaching and why learning these are important to their futures.
Consider time. As discussed during Bryan Alexander’s webinar, chatGPT and other generative AI tools offer a short-cut to individuals who are short on time. Examine your course schedule to determine if you are unknowingly pushing students to take short-cuts. Some instructors try to cover too much content in their courses already.
Remember, AI is not human. Be careful not to anthropomorphize chatGPT and other generative AI tools. ChatGPT is a language model, and if we anthropomorphize these technologies, then it will be much harder to understand their promise and perils. Murray Shanahan suggests that we avoid statements such as, “chatGPT knows…”, or “ChatGPT thinks…”; instead, use “According to chatGPT…” or “ChatGPT’s output…”.
Again, AI is likely to be a part of your students’ life to some extent this semester, so plan accordingly. Critically considering your course design in the context of generative AI is an important educator practice. Following the Provost’s call, MSU instructors are encouraged to 1) develop a course-level generative AI use policy and actively discuss with students about expectations for generative AI use in the work for your class, 2) promote equitable and inclusive use of the technology, and 3) work with colleagues across campus to determine ethical and scholarly applications of generative AI for preparing students to succeed in an evolving digital landscape. MSU does not currently have a university-wide policy on AI in the classroom, so  it is your responsibility as instructor to note and explain your individual course policy. A conversation with your department is highly recommended so that generative AI use in the classroom reflects that in the discipline.Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash

Strategies for Designing Assessments in the Age of AI by Jay Loftus
 
Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

Photo by Tra Nguyen on Unsplash
 
The first day of class sets the tone for the entire semester. Student achievement is directly tied to how well a teacher establishes and implements classroom procedures, norms, and behaviors. Plan carefully for the first day of class, and implement those plans with energy, kindness, and rigor.
*note: distancing and other precautions required during the COVID19 pandemic may influence how some of these tips look in your face-to-face/hybrid classes 
Post a schedule and objectives 

Arrive early to prep the room
Objectives and agenda give students a sense of direction

Put students to work

Give students a meaningful task to complete immediately 
Set the tone for productivity to give students purpose

Assign seats

Place students intentionally so they can function as groups
Give students a sense of place in the room

Greet students at the door

Welcome students as they enter, introducing yourself
Interact personally to give students a sense of belonging

“You will either win or lose your class on the first days of school.” Wong, H. K., & Wong, R. T. (1998). The First Days of School: How to Be an Effective Teacher.
The first day is your only shot to define the terms of the class. What is the subject matter? What are the most important ideas? What does a successful student look like? Instill in the students a growth mindset and make it clear to them that they have a voice and they need to use it in class daily.
Review critical procedures

Set expectations of students, defining their boundaries
Let students voice their expectations

Teach students how to learn

Define what learning looks like in your class
Chart a path for success and give students agency

Focus on ways of being

Let the first day be about role setting
Define classroom culture before addressing subject matter

Engage in goal setting

Show students what they’ll know by semester’s end
Have students write their goals for the class

 
Resources
https://bit.ly/2VKzsYI
https://bit.ly/2bwXTPb
https://bit.ly/2PIMyjx
https://bit.ly/2GPWy6F

Interested faculty members can partner with us to create interdisciplinary, experiential courses as part of the Spartan Studios project within the Hub for Innovation in Learning and Technology
Are you interested in:

Invigorating your teaching?
Collaborating with colleagues in other disciplines?
Creating a course that tackles a real problem?
Learning high-impact teaching practices?
Making experiential learning accessible to more MSU undergrads?
Giving your students workplace-relevant skills in high demand from employers?
Exploring new areas for your research? 
Engaging with the local community or forming partnerships with local or international stakeholders? 

We are looking for educators interested in trying a new way of teaching.
Spartan Studios courses can be:

Experiential: students learn through and reflect on their experiences
Interdisciplinary: co-taught by multiple faculty members from different disciplinary backgrounds and/or departments across campus. Students are exposed to approaches/methods not normally part of their major and work with other students from different majors
Project-based: teams of students work to design their own solutions. They plan, produce, receive feedback, and iterate their projects. It’s ok to fail.
Impactful: courses can work with community partners to create relevant, local solutions
Accessible: these high-impact educational experiences are accessible to more students than study abroad programs or unpaid internships 
Transformative: Research suggests that this type of course can lead to positive outcomes for students and faculty members
In-person or online

We help faculty members identify the combination of features that best fit their course, topic, and goals.
The Spartan Studios project helps faculty members develop experiential interdisciplinary courses at MSU where students respond to real life situations or wicked problems and design solutions in partnership with local stakeholders. We have been facilitating prototype courses since 2018, supporting faculty members who developed experiential courses including Snares to Wares, Wildlife Sanctuary, the Food Waste Challenge, and Songwriting.
We can facilitate your teaching goals through consultations, our Playkit resource for faculty, and a limited number of stipends for 2021-22.
If you are interested in creating novel and transformative student experiences at MSU, connect with the Hub to learn how to plan and teach your own compelling Spartan Studios course.Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash